


Backwards and Forward

by mcgarrygirl78



Series: Starting Over [34]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Drama, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcgarrygirl78/pseuds/mcgarrygirl78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My parents were very photogenic.  Every picture had to be perfect because nothing else was.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backwards and Forward

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompt by sciencegurl for Hotch and Beth to talk about his father.

“You don’t talk a lot about your dad.”

“What?” Hotch held her close to him and they were enjoying the silence. Actually his mind had been somewhere else and it was a nice feeling. Talking to Beth was nice too though.

“I mean you don’t talk about your family much at all and that’s fine, it really is. It’s just…”

“It’s not fine.”

“No Aaron, its fine. I don’t even know your father’s name though. That concerns me just a little.”

“His name was Alexander Hotchner.”

“Jack and I were looking through some photo albums earlier and I saw his picture. You look just like him.”

“It’s why I don’t like traveling through Richmond.” Hotch said. “I'm just little Alexander there.”

“Was your father someone important?”

“He was a State Senator who had bigger aspirations but never quite saw them come true. I didn’t know you and Jack were looking at pictures earlier.”

“He wanted to show me his family.” Beth sat up on the couch. “He has to do that project for class, where he picks one picture and tells a story. Jack wants to use a real picture and not one from a magazine. He told me he didn’t know a lot about his Pop-Pop though, only his Grandpa Tug. He referred to him as Nana’s dead husband.”

“Did he?” Hotch thought that was interesting. He’d never really talked about his father to his son and didn’t feel the need to. His stepfather was sufficient enough. He was more than sufficient, he was a good man. Hotch’s father on the other hand couldn’t always say that. “He may have asked my mother about him.”

“What do you think she would say?” Beth asked.

“It’s tough to tell with her. She’s never pulled any punches but Jack is just a little boy. Over the years she’s softened in that respect.”

“So she never pulled any punches with you?”

“No, and not with Sean either. You can change what you do but not who you are. Still I figure if she would've said anything too out of sorts Jack would've said something to me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why, did he say something to you?” Hotch asked.

“No,” she shook her head. “But he liked the picture.”

“My parents were very photogenic. Every picture had to be perfect because nothing else was.”

“All our family pictures are…” Beth laughed a bit. “OK, they're not horrible but we were sort of the matching sweater brigade. My mother was into that.”

“My mother is a combination of Jessica Lange in _Everybody’s All American_ and Elizabeth Taylor in _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_. It was a lot to digest as a little boy. I guess you'll have to meet her someday. She’s been complaining.”

“I only want to do what makes you comfortable, Aaron. Sometimes families are tough. Mine isn’t perfect and I know yours isn’t either.”

“Yeah.” he looked down at his lap. “How about I make some tea?”

“Sure.”

He didn’t want to talk about it and Beth didn’t want to push. They’d known each other for over a year and she’d never pushed. He only had one picture of his family, other than Jack, up in his condo. It was he and his mother when he was five. 

It was on the bookshelf and he didn’t elaborate on the description beyond him and his mother when he was five years old. Aaron didn’t talk about Haley and he didn’t talk about growing up. When they first started to get serious he told her that he just wanted to go forward for a while so that when he had to go back he wouldn’t fall back too far. Beth wondered how far forward they had to go.

“My father died when I was 16.” Hotch said from the kitchen.

“Was he sick?” Beth got up from the couch and walked into the other room.

“He had Stage 4 lung cancer. Smoking two packs a day finally caught up with him. I found out because I followed him. I followed him around all day and watched him put his life in order before he died. I don’t even know if he ever told my mother that he was terminally ill. At that point I don’t even know if she would've cared. When it happened I don’t even know how I felt.”

“You didn’t have the best relationship?”

“No.” he shook his head. “He wanted all of these things for me but they were his things. I didn’t know what I wanted, I was just a kid, but I knew the consequences of things not turning out as my father wanted them to. He could be strict and unyielding. Life threw him enough curveballs…his son was going to do what he said.”

“My dad was tough on my brother sometimes too.” Beth said.

“I hope he wasn’t as tough as mine.”

“I'm thinking that he wasn’t. Do you and your mom ever talk about him?”

“She talks about him sometimes. It’s hard to explain. She’ll say I'm a workaholic, just like him. But that’s the only time she’d ever compared us. One of my mother’s favorite lines is ‘I’m an excellent judge of character, your father notwithstanding’. 

“She says I got my profiling skills from her. It didn’t quite happen that way. I got my profiling skills because of her. But I love my mother, despite it all, so I allow her the colorful history. She knows what happened and she has to live with it just like I do. I let her live it in the best way she can.”

“I’d love to meet her someday, Aaron, and your stepfather too.”

“You will.” He got two mugs and turned off the kettle. “I think you would like her. She has a very attractive persona.”

“I'm not sure I know what that means.” Beth said.

“You will as soon as you meet her.” Hotch managed to almost smile. “She's larger than life.”

“So are you more like her or your father?”

Hotch didn’t know how to answer that and didn’t really want to. He definitely had some of his father’s qualities. He was a hard worker, driven, smart, and ambitious. He wasn’t abusive and tyrannical, which his father could be personally and professionally. 

He wasn’t a womanizer at all. But there were times when he couldn’t see past his own nose. Hotch could also alienate the people who loved him, or tried to love him, as he’d done with his late wife and his team. That was his father to a tee. He got his empathy and his motivation to do the right thing from his mother. 

Still, if he looked in the mirror on any given night he wouldn’t see either one of them. For so long he’d been pushing them down, to the back of his mind and the bottom of his belly. Hotch didn’t know if he didn’t see them because they weren't there or because he refused to. They’d made their life choices and he had to make his.

“It’s tough to say. I honestly don’t know.”

He sat down at the table with the two mugs of tea. Beth took hers and smiled. She reached out for his hand, squeezing, reassuring. Hotch shivered when she stroked her finger over his knuckles. 

He could trust her. He could tell her everything and she would still love him; Hotch was sure. That didn’t mean he was going to. Some of the words had never come out of his mouth. It was probably better that way.

“My mother calls her depression medication vitamins. She refuses to call them anything else…I think she almost believes they are that now. Every morning my stepfather wakes up, makes her breakfast, and makes sure she takes her vitamins. And that’s the world I grew up in. Except it was before she started taking vitamins.”

Beth nodded, knowing she wasn’t going to ask anything else. He’d said enough tonight and she appreciated him opening up. This was going to be a process. She might know Aaron for the rest of his life and might not get it all. That was going to have to be OK. 

Sometimes she wasn’t sure that it would be but knew they had lived different lives. She was just so happy that whatever he’d been through as a little boy, and a grown man, hadn't totally destroyed his capacity to love. He had a huge heart. There were times he had a big smile and a boisterous laugh. 

Those times were a lot less than when she did but they made each other happy. And she didn’t have to know all of his dark times to know all of him. Life experiences of all kinds could define someone. The ones they were making together would be the most defining of all.

“I think its time to watch _The Lost Boys_.” he smiled. “You promised to introduce me to The Coreys tonight.”

“Do you still want to watch?” she asked.

“Oh yes I do.” Hotch nodded. “There is no way you can dangle late 80s Kiefer Sutherland in a man’s face and then snatch it away.”

“Well I would never want to deny you a proper Kiefer Sutherland fix. Prepare to be amazed.”

“I'm looking forward to it.”

***


End file.
